Certain online service providers require authentication of a user before granting the user access to a service provided by the service provider. A common practice is to require the user to provide login information such as a username and password that the service provider may use to authenticate the identity of the user.
It is common for a user of multiple services provided by one or more online service providers to create and manage multiple different usernames and passwords. This can become inconvenient, confusing, and/or burdensome to the user.
Attempts have been made to reduce the number of usernames and passwords that have to be created, maintained, and/or used by a user of multiple services. For example, single-sign-on technologies have been created to allow a single set of user credentials (e.g., a username and/or password) to be used for federated login to a set of services and/or service providers.
For example, a standard known as “OpenID” has been developed to allow third-party authentication to be used by service providers to authenticate users to services provided by service providers. In accordance with the OpenID standard, an OpenID provider generates and maintains a unique identifier for a user. The unique identifier is referred to as the user's OpenID. A service provider may establish a relationship with the OpenID provider and authorize the use of the user's OpenID to authenticate the user to a service provided by the service provider. Thereafter, the user may log in to the service by simply indicating a desire to use the user's OpenID for login and then authenticating (e.g., logging in) to the OpenID provider. Once the OpenID provider authenticates the user, the OpenID provider provides the user's OpenID to the service provider, which may then use the user's OpenID to authenticate the user to the service provided by the service provider.
However, there are concerns about potential security vulnerabilities of the OpenID standard. Consequently, certain service providers may be reluctant to authorize the use of users' third-party OpenIDs to authenticate the users to services provided by the service providers. Such service providers may be more willing to consider authorizing the use of users' third-party OpenIDs for authentication to services if additional security measures were to be implemented in conjunction with authorization of users' third-party OpenIDs. For at least these reasons, there exists a need and/or desire for new and/or improved technologies for authorizing third-party authentication of users to a service.